New iTunes Podcast Categorization and WP-iPodCatter

On Friday, I received an email from Apple’s iTunes Podcasting team that they’re changing the categories in the iTunes directory. So, I updated the WP-iPodcatter plugin to reflect these changes.

Like their removal of item-level categorization, I’m not crazy about these changes.

There are 2 ‘Other’ categories (in Religion, Games & Hobbies). But not in any of the other categories. ‘Other’, like ‘Miscellaneous’, is an acknowledgment of an unsuccessful categorization scheme. Conceivably, ‘Other’ will have the most things in it – so filtering that category will be the challenge.

These categories feel more like Apple trying to form and mold what’s in the iTunes directory rather than fostering what’s currently being published.

I have no idea where to put the First Crack Podcast. Best I could do was; Business, Technology, Arts:Food. I know. Not accurate.

Then again, iTunes is a pretty worthless interface for finding podcasts, and these category revisions only make the problem worse. While doing nothing to eliminate podcasters gaming their placement with; -, –>, :: , ‘, ‘”, “”””””””””””””””””.

All podcast directories have a similar problem – trying to be the Yahoo of podcasts (hierarchical directory) rather than the Google (really good filtering). If you’re looking for good podcasts – I recommend AmigoFish or a regular web search (Google, Yahoo, etc) with “podcast” added at the end.